ABOUNDING IN THE WORK OF THE WE are not only to do the work of the Lord, but we are to abound in it. As a man cannot be said to abound in wealth, if he is only now and then possessed of a pound, so a Christian cannot be said to abound in the work of the Lord, if he only now and then puts forth an effort in his cause, Constant, untiring efforts, must be put forth, if we would abound in the work of the Lord. It is far better to abound in the work of the Lord than to abound in wealth. It is a far greater source of present happiness. It is a far surer security against future want. Few can abound in wealth, but all can abound in the work of the Lord. No matter what may be the circumstances in which one is placed, no matter how poor, and feeble, and obscure one may be, he may abound in the work of the Lord. The afflicted one who is confined to the chamber of sickness may abound in prayer, and in submission to the will of God. A man abounds in the work of the Lord as much when he suffers the will of God, as when he does the will of God. If the poor and the rich can abound in the work of the Lord, much wore can the rich and the active. There is enough to be done. No one need be idle. The commandment is exceeding broad. The wants of the world are over pressing. The work is all prepared to our hands. The aid of the Holy Spirit is proffered. Reader, are you abounding in the work of the Lord? Is it your chief business to do his will, and to promote his cause? Or do you put forth only occasional efforts in consequence of your profession, or to satisfy the demands of conscience. ANOTHER CHILD IN HEAVEN. Ir was mid-day when, softly and unobserved, I entered the chamber of death. A silence, broken only by the occasional outgushings of grief, reigned there. On the couch before me lay the almost lifeless form of one who was just on the verge of heaven. An aged father whose emaciated form and tremulous voice told of the many years he had spent in winning souls to Christ, a tender mother, brothers, sisters, and dear friends had gathered around the bedside of this dying girl-a lovely young lady of nineteen sum mers, who had in the morning of life learned to love Jesus. Not a tear fell from the eye of that father; but with a countenance lighted up with a heavenly radiance, he sat watching the last short breathings of his child; and as she sunk in death, he exclaimed, "Another child in heaven!" Scarcely had these accents fallen from his lips, when the bereaved almost involuntarily kneeled and commended themselves to that God who has promised that "He will never leave or forsake those who put their trust in Him." What was it that so cheered and sustained this father, as he saw his darling child in the embraces of death? It was this;-he had trained her for heaven. He felt that she had gone to that blessed home, whither he and his dear family were fast gathering. Reader, are you a parent? What is the influence you are exerting over your children? Are you preparing them for a blessed immortality? Are you so training them that you can have the assurance, when death enters your family circle and removes one therefrom, that you have " a child in heaven ?" THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. "THOU shalt have no other gods before me."-Ex. xx. 3. "Enthrone the great Jehovah in thine heart, Let all thine homage unto him be paid; Suffer no idol to usurp in part The glory due to him who all things made. In thought, word, deed, thy life to him be given, Thou shalt be blessed on earth, and saved in heaven." Collins, the infidel, once meeting a plain countryman, inquired where he was going. "To church, sir." "What to do there ?" "To worship God." " "Pray tell me, is your God a great or a little god?" "He is so great sir, that the heavens cannot contain him, and so little that he can dwell in my heart." Collins afterwards declared, that this simple yet sublime answer had more effect on his mind than all the volumes he had ever read. "Sir," said a lady to Mr Romaine, "I like the doctrine you preach, and think I can give up every thing but one." "What is that, madam ?" "Cards, sir." "You think you could not be happy without them ?" "No, sir, I could not." Then, madam, they are your god, and to them you must look for salvation." This pointed and faithful reply is said to have issued in her conversion. THE CLOSET AND THE PULPIT. "WHAT God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." If a minister attempts to live by his public exercises, and trusts to these to sustain vigour of personal piety, he will soon find himself miserably deficient. If he studies and uses the Word of God only as a means of public instruction, and as a part of professional labour, and if he relies on his public prayers as his main means of keeping his heart in communion with God, he will find that his own experience and his labours for others will be smitten with barrenness. The writer of this will never forget a casual remark made to him by Dr Griffin, respecting a young man, a pupil of his, who had then just commenced preaching. He said, "He has a very active mind and superior talents. The only question I have about him is, whether he will pray down the Holy Spirit while he preaches." The importance of that question suggested by that casual word, coming from one of our most successful preachers, forced itself on the mind in such a way as to have become a most cherished sentiment. In our estimation of a minister and the probabilities of his success, this is indeed the great question, Will he pray down the Holy Spirit? If in the choice of a minister, a people fail to ask this question, they commit a capital mistake. And if a minister himself expects success by the mere force of talents or industry, without a careful cultivation of his own perreckoned without his host. sonal piety and a life of earnest prayer, he will have In a day like the present, when so little of the power of the Holy Ghost is felt, and when there is so much preaching with so little fruit, what question forces itself upon the ministry more naturally than this, whether we are praying down the Holy Ghost -or whether all our pulpit labour is not sadly lacking in the important accompaniment of closet labour -or whether we deal enough with our own hearts, in our attempts to reach the hearts of others. ! THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY. 97 THE MIXTURE OF FAITH AND FEAR. THE mixture of fear in reference to the weak- Our first illustration is taken from infancy when the child makes its first attempts to walk. Here the two principles are working together at the same moment-first, a fearful. ness, in virtue of which it will not let go the hold of its nurse's hand; and secondly, a confidence, that while keeping its hold firmly it will be supported and in safety during its whole adventure across the floor. Fear on the one hand, and faith on the other, are both in operation, and both necessary. Extinguish the principle of fear altogether, and the child, committing itself too early to its own strength, will inevitably fall. Extinguish the principle of faith altogether, and the child, having no confidence even in the effectual support held out by the hands of its attendant, might never attempt the exercise of walking, and so remain in impotency all its days. And thus the mingled operation of these two principles, so far from being that recondite, that unpractical thing which people alike unobservant of the Bible and of human nature regard it to be, is a thing of current and most obvious exemplification in the experience of every family. Should our second illustration be now deem*From the remarkable volume of posthumous sermons lately published, being part of a sermon on the words, "That he would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear." -Luke i. 74. ed utterly superfluous, and perhaps even nauseated as you would the insipidity of any overdone excess-we must still plead the magnitude of the lesson, and our urgent feeling of that magnitude. I may be conscious of inability to swim across a river, and nevertheless commit myself fearlessly to its waters, should a rope be handed out to me from the vessel that is passing over it. Here, too, we have the joint operation of both principles :-Fear in reference to my own power of self support, restrains me from letting go my hold faith in the strength and tightness of the rope, gives me a feeling of perfect security while I retain my hold. Both principles, however opposite in their nature, incline me to the one thing of keeping firmly and constantly by the rope. Were I confident that I had no need of it, I might fling it indignantly away from me, and should my confidence be presumption, I might sink to the bottom and perish. But I fear, and therefore keep by it as my only dependence. Were I fearful of the rope's strength, and trembled lest, when I took my hold of it, it should break or separate from the vessel, I might refuse its aid, and rather keep my hands in the exercise of swimming. Give me the right fear-that is, a fearful sense of my own weakness and inability to swim; and the right faith that is, a faith in the perfect security of the rope which I hold by; and these principles, so far from contravening each other, do in fact conspire to the one result of making me cleave with full purpose of heart to that only support by which I can be carried fearlessly through the river, and brought in safety to the other side of it. And it is just by such a fear and by such a faith that we make our way into heaven across the troubled sea of this world. These two are not distracting forces which draw in opposite ways. The one verily shuts us up into the other. It is just when we look abroad upon the adverse influences of sense and of society, and then bethink ourselves of our own utter inadequacy to cope with them-it is when admonished by inward experience of our constant tendency to relinquish all dependence and all desire towards God-it is the frequent obscuration of Him in our own spirits, that, sublimed although they may have somewhat been, in hours of stillness and seclusion to the ethereal brightness of the upper regions, yet that ever and anon on our return, whether to the world's business or to the world's companies, they lapse again into earthliness, and grovel there --it is this perpetual finding, that however able to maintain in conduct those equities of action amongst our fellows which belong to the virtue of righteousness, yet that we utterly and throughout every hour of our lives fail in those sanctities of affection towards God which constitute the virtue of holiness-these are the experiences which must at length school every honest inquirer into an utter fearfulness of himself, a distrust, a most warrantable and well-founded distrust in all the resources of his own strength and of his own wisdom. It is this often-tried and as often ascertained deficiency of nature, which reconciles him to the doctrine of a grace that might put strength into nature for the whole work and warfare of obedience. Looking to the impotency of the one, there is fear; looking to the sufficiency of the other, there is faith. Both are salutary. In virtue of the first, he has a perpetual distrust in himself; in virtue of the second, he has a perpetual dependence on the Lord Jesus. There is no conflict between these feelings-they work, as it were, to one another's hands. The movement to which they give rise is first an export of prayer from the soul to heaven's sanctuary; and secondly, an import of power from heaven's sanctuary into the soul. It is this habitual sense of weakness which excites to habitual prayer-it is this habitual prayer which brings down the habitual supplies of strength and of grace for all services. The man works mightily because God works in him mightily. He realizes the great paradox of the Christian life, that when he is weak then he is strong-that when deepest in humility he is borne most steadfastly upward and onward along the heights of an angelic sacredness. ized, and his history becomes that of an earthly, carnal, and alienated creature. On looking to the other quarter, even to that where the fulness of grace is treasured up, and whence it issues forth on the praying and the watching and the working disciple—it might well rejoice in those precious influences from heaven by which the heart of nan is impregnated with its own sacredness, and his history becomes that of a prosperous aspirant after its glory and immortality and honour. Could he, without any hold on the support that is above him, make his own way on the ascent of a progressive holiness, then he need not tremble; or even were it quite natural for him to keep that hold at all times, then might he persist in a sort of unbroken and undisturbed security of heart, while the temptations of life play idly around him. But, in point of truth, there is a constant aptitude to let go the hold, and every intelligent Christian is conscious thereof, and so he is kept, and that perpetually, on the alert and the alarm-fearful on the one hand, lest he should quit his dependence, and confident, on the other, that so long as he retains it he is safe. You can imagine the light and evidence wherewith the sacred volume stands forth to the eye of a believer, when made to observe how precisely the descriptions of the Bible accord with all the developments of an experience so very peculiar. When called upon to fear-as in the first verse of the fourth chapter of the Hebrews-lest he should come short of the promised rest, he knows well what that is which should make him afraid. But this very fear, founded on a distrust of his own powers, shuts him up unto another dependence—and when called upon in the last verse of the same chapter, to come boldly to the throne of grace, that he may find grace to help him in the time of need, he knows well what that is which should make him courageous. This delicate alternation between the two feelings, so often advertThese views are in full harmony with Scrip- ed to in the Bible, and so accurately reflected ture; and did we but take along with us what in the personal history of a believer, affords that is which we should feel fear about, and that very correspondence between the tablet of again, what that is which we should put faith human nature on the one hand, and the tablet in, we could be at no loss to understand either of revelation on the other, which warrants a still how the psalmist could mix trembling with his more intimate conviction than before of God mirth, or how the apostle could be always sor- being the common author or architect of both. rowful yet always rejoicing. "When I said, Meanwhile, too, he practises the lesson of serving my foot slippeth,” saith David, “ thy mercy, O God both without fear and with fear-without Lord, held me up." On looking to one quarter, fear on the calculation that he makes of God's even to that of sense and of nature, we might promises-with fear on the calculation he makes well tremble before those adverse influences of his own powers. The sense of his own helpby which the heart of man is wholly secular-lessness will make him fearful of depending upon | THE MIXTURE OF FAITH AND FEAR. it. The sense of God's truth in the promises will make him faithful in depending upon it. The faith and the fear are embodied by him into one act of obedience, even as within the limits of a single verse they have been embodied by the apostle into one precept. He tells the Gentiles not to boast themselves against the children of Israel; and why? because it was by faith only that they stood-" And be not therefore," he says, "high-minded, but fear." Here, and within the compass of one utterance, the right fear and the right faith are both contemporaneously pressed upon them. The right fear would keep them from boasting, allied as it was with the sentiment, that although they stood, it was by no power or holiness of their own. The right faith would direct their eye to that fountain of grace which was above them, and whence they drew those supplies of light and of strength, which from the unbelieving Jews had been withholden, and as they Icoked to that God who alone made them to differ, they would not be high-minded. 99 activity with man's utmost dependence. This is the state of it: he does all that he can with the strength which he now has, and he looks to God for that strength being kept up and extended. He knows that if he do not work up to the power which is at present in him, that power will not be added to, and, what is more, that even such as it is, it may be withdrawn. He knows that if he do not trade with all diligence on the actual stock of grace, this stock will be actually diminished. Whatever, therefore, in the way of duty or of service, his hand findeth to do, he doeth it with all his existing might, lest deserted in wrath by the sustaining might of God, he should not only be arrested in his progress towards the strength and the stature of a more advanced Christianity, but should decline into the utter impotency of one who is altogether without grace and without godliness It is precisely because God worketh in him to will and to do of His good pleasure that he fears lest that good pleasure should be forfeited in the time that is But the most complete scriptural illustration to come by kia careless and remiss improveof this doctrine which can be given, is from તમે all which o has done for him in the that celebrated passage where the apostle tells time that now The precise reason why so his converts to work out their own salvation sous l so busy and so much on the with fear and trembling, because it is God that alertirring up and putting to its practical worketh in them both to will and to do or use the gift that is in him, is, that if he do not good pleasure. It is conceivable how a man he will receive no more gifts, and what he has should both will aright and work aright will be taken away. A more plain and also, virtue of an influence from heaven, and how,e powerful incitement to all diligence, and to obtain this influence, a prayer should arise from the heart, and a power should come down both upon the heart and upon the hand for all the services of a vigorous and an active obedience. But why should there be a fear or trembling in this process? The fear is lest among the besetting urgencies of sense and of nature, we should be tempted to forget God, and so He should withdraw His helping hand from us. The fear is lest, in the confidence of nature, we should go forth against the adverse influences by which we are surrounded, and so be overcome. The fear is lest we should lose our hold of God, and so He, quitting His hold of us, and abandoning us to our own unaided impotency, should leave us to the disgrace and the ruin of a fatal overthrow. The fear is lest, not praying as we ought, we should be deprived of the needful element for right and acceptable performance; and, most important of all, the fear is lest, not performing as we ought, we should provoke God to withhold His answers of grace and of graciousness from our prayers. It is this last which harmonizes man's utmost ence. at throughout every single instant of his course, cannot well be conceived than that if. he do not at this instant work to the uttermost of that ability wherewith the Spirit has now invested him, the Spirit will be grieved, and may, on the very next instant, abandon him to his own unsupported feebleness. The relation between the hand that works and the hand by which it is strengthened, furnishes the very strongest, and at the same time most intelligible motive to steady, faithful, and enduring obediThe man works out his salvation upon the strength of what God has wrought into him; and he does it with fear and trembling, just because most fearfully and tremblingly alive to the thought, that if he does not, God may cease working in him to will any more or to do any more. The doctrine of grace thus understood, so far from acting as an extinguisher upon human activity, is in truth the very best excitement to it. This dependence| between the busy exercise of all your present graces and the supply of new, is the fittest possible tenure on the part of God whereby to HINTS TO YOUNG MEN REGARDING with an unauthenticated, untenacious faith—a faith that lacks the witness in the heart. See that you grasp, manipulate, clinch the things unseen and eternal. See that the truth be wrought into the very texture of your inner man-that it be the life, the joy, the essence of your souls; so that you could sooner have your soul torn from its clay tenement than have that truth which vivifies, sanctifies, sustains your soul, rent from it. hold man to his most constant, most careful, most vigilant obedience, It is felt that the only way of obtaining enlargement and vigour for future services, is to acquit one's self to the uttermost of his present strength of all his present services; and that thus, and thus alone, he can step by step work his ascending way to But will some of you say, "We would if we could a higher and a higher status in practical Chris--if we had means and leisure-authenticate the tianity. We are aware of the reproach that faith; we would examine into prophecy and its fulhas been cast on the doctrine of the Spirit's in-filment, into miracles and their evidence; we would search into the various proofs of the genuineness of fluences; but we trust it will be seen from Holy Scripture; but we have no opportunity given these views, however imperfectly given, that he us for the task. Be it so; yet all of you have leisure to test revelation by that touchstone which, after all, who labours in all the present might given, and is to the individual believer at once the most simple, looks for more, instead of living in the mystic the most satisfactory, and the most decisive. The instate of an indolent and expectant quietism, he fidel may laugh at the proof, but the believer would of all other men is the most awake to every die upon the strength of it. You may test the Word of God by your own experience; you may have the call of duty-the most painstaking and arduous witness in yourselves, and evince it to the world in in every performance of it. your lives. How clear the witness which the simplest man has in himself, when he has recovered from deadly disease through the skill of some physician, that the treatment has been sound and the remedies' efficacious! Try as you may to reason or to ridicule him out of his conviction, he will answer, "You can neither argue nor laugh me out of my consciousness of having recovered. I consulted the physician-I followed his prescriptions, and regained my health; how, then, can I doubt the reality of the result or the excellence of the cause?" So, if you have recourse to the balm in Gilead, to the Physician there, honestly, earnestly, believingly, looking to the Spirit of God to enable you, and willing to submit implicitly to what is prescribed, as one who is desperately diseased, and ready to die; then, as the Lord liveth, you shall prove the balm to be so sovereign, and the power of Heaven to be so omnipotent, that you shall be able to set to your seal that God is true, and that the Bible is the word of his truth. Then, though all the infidels in the universe were to combine against you, and all the nominal believers in the universe were to abandon the Bible, you would still say, "What the Bible has done for me, through the grace of the God of the Bible, I cannot question; none can argue me out of my consciousness, none can delude me into the notion that a cunningly devised fable' could accomplish what has been effected in me. I believe the Gospel, because I have proved it to be the power of God unto my salvation. Faithful among the faithless, the Lord being my helper, I will die for that which has raised me from the depth of sin to the life of righteousness, and which will exalt me to the life of glory in heaven." BY THE REY HUGH STOWELL, MANCHESTER,* REST on the grand principle-that the Bible has within itself ample proofs of its divinity. Should infidels tauntingly tell you that you have never had opportunity to master the external evidences-that you have never explored all the complicated documents and manuscripts which bear upon the subject -and that, therefore, you are not competent to come to a conclusion; you may answer, Yes, but we have the Bible itself; and we have searched it, and we have proved it, and we have found it to be divine: it has written its truth upon our hearts-it has engraven itself upon our inward parts." Do not, we entreat you, fellow-Christians, content yourselves with walking about the fortress of revelation, telling its towers, marking its bulwarks, and admiring their strength and stability, while you remain outside of its ramparts, exposed to every enemy. It avails not for you how impregnable the citadel, if you are not encompassed within its walls. Enter the door by the new and living way. Then, though a host of men, yea, of devils, should encamp against you, you need not be afraid. Amid the shock of arms and the shout of battle,you may sing this song: "We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks." Rest not in a nominal, notional faith. Beloved, rest not in an unrealizing acquiescence in the truth of the Bible. Such a shadow of faith might perhaps survive in stiller times, as a ship, however badly moored, may ride serene at anchor whilst the waves are gentle and the breezes soft; but, when clouds are darkening and tempests mantling, it behoves her to see to it that her anchor is not cast in the yielding sand, but firmly riveted in the rock, that she may brave the billow and outride the storm. Fellow-soldiers of the cross! God has fixed our lot on perilous and sifting times; neutrality is fast fading away, and positivity taking its place; and "Who is on the Lord's side?" will be the battle-cry of the host of God's elect in the coming conflict. You must choose your side. You must gird yourselves for the struggle. You must know in whom you have believed. must know what you have believed. You must know why you have believed. You must not be contented You * From Lectures to Young Men, recently published in London. Believe me, brethren, there was many a poor working man in the days of the early martyrs-many a plain artisan in the days of bloody Queen Mary, who went to the stake rejoicing to burn for his faithnot because he could prove it by elaborate evidence, or attest it by philosophy, or science, or literature: but because he had tested it by his heart: and on the simple strength of the experience of his heart, he suffered unto death, and triumphed to die. Yes; and we have met with many an unlettered man who has stood all the banter, and the taunts, and the jeering sophistry of scorners over the loom or the dye-vat, and who, when he could not refute their subtie objec tions, simply said, "Well, I have felt it, and you have not; I have proved, and you have not; I have its truth engraved on my heart, and witnessed in my conscience. You may as well attempt to make me believe that there is no reality in the sun, whilst he |